Summary:
Confederate Colonel John Baldwin writes on the September, 1861, arrest of John
Overman, a suspected unionist. Authorities confined Overman in the Staunton
jail.
FORT OR WATERS, HIGHLAND COUNTY,
September 21, 1861.
This letter has been handed to me as the officer commanding the line between Moterey and Petersburg. I forward it according to its address, and with it the following extracts from the report of Capt. George Jackson, former commandant of the post at Monterey:
John W. Overman; lives in Preston County, five miles west of West Union. Was arrested without arms and confined in the guard house August 23, 1861, on the charge of being a Union man. Says that he was a Union man until his arrest, but has since changed and is now willing to stand by the South.
It is proper to state here that all of those persons mentioned in the above list as arrested on the charge of disloyalty, other than those caught in arms against the South, were arrested upon representations of numbers of the most substantial, reliable and loyal citizens of Hardy County, to the effect that they were actively engaged in giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
These extracts give all the information I have about Overman, except that I was informed by two gentlemen from Hardy that he was taken up as a spy. He is sent to the Staunton jail by order of Gen. H. R. Jackson.
Respectfully,
JOHN B. BALDWIN,
Col. Fifty-second Virginia Regt.
Bibliographic Information : Letter Reproduced from The War of The Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 2, Volume 2, Serial No. 115, Pages 1381-1382, Broadfoot Publishing Company, Wilmington, NC, 1997.
